Welcome to the Shroomery Message Board! You are experiencing a small sample of what the site has to offer. Please login or register to post messages and view our exclusive members-only content. You'll gain access to additional forums, file attachments, board customizations, encrypted private messages, and much more!

(CNN) -- After complaints from parents and students, police in Goose Creek, South Carolina, defended their decision Friday to send a team of officers, some with guns drawn, into a high school earlier this week for a drug raid that turned up no drugs.

The Berkeley School District north of Charleston, South Carolina, also defended its role in the incident, which has triggered outrage among some in the community.

Stratford High School students described Wednesday's incident as frightening.

"They would go put a gun up to them, push them against the wall, take their book bags and search them," Aaron Sims, 14, told CNN affiliate WCSC. "They just came up and got my friend, not even saying anything or what was going to happen. ... I was scared."

Sims said his mother was "a little angry," but his father understood and "thought it was necessary."

Lt. Dave Aarons of the Goose Creek Police Department said the raid, the first the department has done at a school, followed a police investigation into drug activity that began after a student informed school staff about drug sales on school property.

Police monitored video from school surveillance cameras for several days and "observed consistent, organized drug activity," he said. "Students were posing as lookouts and concealing themselves from the cameras."

When the principal saw more of the same suspicious activity on the school surveillance video, he asked for the officers to respond, Aarons said.

On Wednesday, 14 officers went to the school "and assumed strategic positions," he said.

Within 30 seconds, officers had moved to "safely secure the 107 students who were in that hallway," Aarons said. "During that time some of the officers did unholster in a down-ready position, so that they would be able to respond if the situation became violent."

"The school also designated faculty to secure the hallway to keep other students from entering," Aarons said.

Anytime narcotics and money are involved he said there is "the reasonable assumption that weapons will be involved. ... Our primary concern was the safety of the students (and) everyone else involved."

'School had no knowledge that weapons would be drawn'Aarons said "12 to 14 students" were placed in handcuffs or plastic flexcuffs "due to their failure to respond to repeated police instructions to get on their knees with their hands on their heads," after one of the lieutenants explained to the students what was going on.

A canine unit was brought in and the dog responded positively to 12 book bags, which were then searched by school officials, said David Barrow, secondary school supervisor for the Berkeley School District. But no drugs were found and no arrests were made.

"The school had no knowledge that weapons would be drawn," Barrow said. "We understand students' and parents' and the community's concerns about this particular search. We will work internally and with local law enforcement to be sure these issues are addressed."

Still, he said, the school was concerned about possible drug sales on campus, and believed action was necessary.

Jared Weeks, 14, told WCSC that police were aggressive.

"They kind of pushed us against the wall and started searching us," Weeks said. "I didn't think all that was called for."

Weeks said he was "kind of nervous," but not scared "because I didn't have anything to hide."

He said there are a lot of drugs in the school, but that this sort of raid was unnecessary. "There is certain people that you know sell drugs," he said. "They could have just searched those people."

Aarons said police believe the drug-dealing students were tipped off.

"I don't think it was an overreaction," he said of the raid. "I believe it was one tactical method by which we could safely approach the problem to ensure that everybody was safe."

Wow... So much for real police work (if that even exists anymore).They just sorta dragnet all the students, hoping to find one or two amongst a crowd of over 100. Is this not against some kind of "freedom" you guys have in the US? the same "freedom" GWB is trying to sell the rest of the globe?

This is the sort of thing that makes it even more apparant to me why Americans are rightfully paranoid about their side-line hobby. If they can raid a bunch of kids at school and menace them with guns, then adults can expect worse. Tough country.

> A canine unit was brought in and the dog responded positively to 12 book bags, which were then searched by school officials, said David Barrow, secondary school supervisor for the Berkeley School District. But no drugs were found and no arrests were made

And yet the courts allow dogs to indicate "probable cause" for a search in other cases. Total @#%@ ing BS.

orizon... my schools exactly the same, we would have filled up the fucking cop cars there would have been so many arrests.

I wish they would have specified the "suspicious activity"

--------------------"In order to rally people, governments need enemies. They want us to be afraid, to hate, so we will rally behind them. And if they do not have a real enemy, they will invent one in order to mobilize us."

Damn I was going around this and found this article. This was the most fucked up day of my life. I will tell you they have 24/7 cameras running in Stratford, I was a senior back then in 03 and what they show you on TV and video is SUGARCOATED TIMES 12. notice they only show a short clip of it. That's because the other footage is too shocking. me and my friends where in the hallways in the morning and all of a sudden they came rushing in WITH guns already drawn, ordering people on the floor, we didn't even think it was real police we thought it was terrorist, anyways we finally realize they were real police when they had dogs sniffing our nuts and shit and it was the most scary/fucked up thing ever. one of the kids got hit in the head because he wouldn't get down in the 2 secs he had to think.

well its 07 now and guess what. WE finally got justice. well everyone that was involved had a chance to get money out of it like an average of $10,000 a piece but i didn't take it. I'm like the only one who didn't because I didn't want anything from these assholes. It would of been like accepting $10,000 from a crack dealing killer. I dunno i thought I would bring this up since it took 4 years for justice. Fucking Pigs. I hope they read this cuz I'll never forget this.

This is just plain wrong. If I was a student there I wouldn't have cooperated either. Fuck that. I have respect for every student who got arrested for non-cooperation. I remember when I was a kid and being told that I had certain inalienable rights.... I guess they were wrong. What will it take to make people give a shit?

--------------------Our quest for discovery fuels our creativity in all fields, not just science. If we reached the end of the line, the human spirit would shrivel and die. But I don't think we will ever stand still: we shall increase in complexity, if not in depth, and shall always be the center on an expanding horizon of possibilities.
-Stephen Hawking

Quote:blinkidiot said:Wow... So much for real police work (if that even exists anymore).They just sorta dragnet all the students, hoping to find one or two amongst a crowd of over 100. Is this not against some kind of "freedom" you guys have in the US? the same "freedom" GWB is trying to sell the rest of the globe?

when under the schools roof a cop can search you against your rights because the school has custody over you for the time being....this is only for liability reasons...what reasons those may be are beyond me.

--------------------Dr says to stop trying to treat the side-effects of big government and focus on the core issues. End the Federal Reserve/audit the gold reserves at Fort Knox, abolish the IRS, end all wars and occupancies, stop the building of an empire that will inevitably fail, and cut all unconstitutional federal programs. Put the power back in the peoples' hands by ending this nanny-state.